


My Lighthouse

by Comicaholic



Series: Cure for corona boredom [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Minor Character Death, Superheroes, wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comicaholic/pseuds/Comicaholic
Summary: Based off a prompt on Pinterest:“Choose your last words wisely,” sneered the villain.The heroine shakily lifted her head, “I love you.”
Relationships: OFC/OFC
Series: Cure for corona boredom [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707526
Kudos: 8





	My Lighthouse

_The Shadow Reaper is a known villain of the city Sapphicton, a city well-known for its superhero, The Golden Illusionist. The villain and the hero have fought countless times over the years, The Shadow remains the only villain not brought to justice by the illusionist so far. Their identities remain unknown to this day…_

That’s pretty much what you’ll get if you ask anyone about The Shadow Reaper, The Golden Illusionist or Sapphicton. Then people go on about their powers and some weird conspiracy theories. The tourism in Sapphicton is high because of this and Ruby Johnson thinks it’s stupid. Why would people come in a city where there’s a hero and villain constantly fighting, not to mention all the other villains that have fun killing people and robbing banks. It also makes her eyes roll how cliché the situation is, it sounds like something right out of a comic book, though she can confirm that the stories are true.

When she was six, before the superhero and supervillain fiasco started, Sapphicton was just a normal town. Unfortunately, she lived in a poor area with high criminal activity. Ruby remembers clearly the day a robber broke into her apartment during the night, that night same night when the robber got caught by her mother, he murdered her and ran away. The police luckily managed to find the murderer, but while they transported him to prison, he managed to escape.

Since then, she realized how many people get away with their crimes by simply running away or escaping, when she grew up she was going to make sure that never happened again.

People to this day still speculate on what happened, whether it was the mysterious science lab that’s behind it or maybe aliens or even something supernatural, during a night a big flash of light enveloped the city, most people weren’t affected by it, while others were and woke up that morning with powers. Ruby was one of them and with the help of her powers, she was going to do the promise she did years ago when she was still a child.

She started by going after more obvious targets, she would find murders or robberies that ended in murder in the newspapers, she would investigate to find who the criminal was, track them down and kill them. She would do it at night as her powers let her merge with the shadows and learned the hard way avoid being in the light when she was in her shadow form or she would be stuck in it, paralyzed, till a shadow or darkness would finally come, only then she could go back to her physical form. Her powers and her motive behind killing criminals are what gave her the name of The Shadow Reaper.

With time, she learned how to fully control her powers and use them to her advantage, however she always preferred her weapons over her abilities and she became almost better at wielding her blades than using her powers. Ever since she was small, she thought those sharp metallic things fascinating.

She had managed to get herself a scholarship to a local college where she was learning the art behind forging different types of swords and daggers as well as the history behind them and their use. She had only bought a few of the blades she owned, most of them she had made them herself.

Sometimes, in her free time, she would go to a public place for the simple fun of creating a bit of chaos, she would put a little thing on fire or make a small explosion, nothing too harmful. A few people had to go to the hospital, nothing fatal though, except for that one time, but how was she supposed to know some idiot would jump out the window from the 10th floor of a building! She hadn’t even set a real fire that time!

She had seen the local superhero trying to put an end to her little chaotic pranks here and there, but she was always gone before the other one got there or she was observing from the distance, a smirk on her face. The first time she got caught, they had a small fight, none of them got out with more than a few bruises.

There were a few other minor heroes, but Ruby started enjoying the little fights with The Golden Illusionist here and there more than she did with any other and she would only go easy with the illusionist. They got so used to each other that each fight almost looked like a choreography that they had learned, it was graceful and practically flawless on both sides.

She had to admit The Golden Illusionist was cute, even though her golden spandex costume that covered her whole body except for her head that was covered with a small mask that covered only her eyes, was ridiculous.

Later, she started going after less obvious criminals and that’s when the people who weren’t wary of her yet, started to. She got the title of villain the day she killed a well-respected professor. While the professor seemed innocent, he was far from it, he was a child rapist, people were just too closed-minded to see it.

Even when you don’t want others opinions to get to your head, sometimes it happens without you noticing. That’s exactly what started happening to her. They were calling her a villain and she was slowly starting to act more and more like one, spiralling into a dark place that once someone reaches it, there’s usually no coming back.

She started becoming more violent with the heroes, her harmless pranks became harmful, sending more and more people to the hospital. She once even almost killed one of the heroes. Her victims were slowly going from people who actually harmed others greatly to small robbers who robbed to survive and never physically harmed anyone.

~*~

Ruby was going after her next victim. She had dark lipstick contrasting well with her pale skin and was wearing her usual black clothes under a black cape with a hood that shadowed her face (with the help of her power she made sure the shadow was always there no matter the lighting), keeping her identity secret. She entered the dark house and faded into the shadows, becoming one. The Shadow Reaper directed herself towards the bedroom where a woman who had committed three robberies in the last two months was. Once behind her she went back to her physical form, took the sword that was on her back silently and decapitated the woman or at least that was supposed to happen, what actually happened was the sword went right through her as if she was a ghost and the woman vanished. She immediately recognized it as an illusion from The Golden Illusionist.

“Long time no see, Illusionist,” she said, a smirk appearing on her face. It had been a long time, ever since she had killed the professor, it seemed that it was more the smaller heroes that were going after her. Maybe they sent her since she was more powerful than the other, especially since she had almost killed the last one.

“Long time no see indeed, Shadow!” Said a cheery voice.

Why was she always so cheery, always so happy? She could probably commit a triple homicide and rob four banks and the illusionist would still sound this cheery.

The Shadow Reaper turned around to find the heroine in her gold suit with her long brown hair in a pony tail, she couldn’t even tell if it was actually her or another illusion. Even though she would never admit it, Ruby’s heart skipped a beat when she saw her and she was actually happy to see her.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t feel this way, she was better off without anyone, people just make you weak, they betray you or others take them away from you.

She pushed her feelings down.

The Shadow took the nearest object and threw it at her opponent, when she caught it, conforming that she wasn’t an illusion, they both started to fight.

Ruby directed her sword where the golden girl’s head was, in response she ducked out of the way and tripped the other with her leg. As the hooded girl fell to the ground she grabbed the other and they both fell to the flour, the masked one falling on top Ruby.

Both of their faces flushed at the proximity, Ruby’s heart was beating fast, not wanting her feelings to resurface, she pushed the other girl off, her merged with the shadows and disappeared into the night.

~*~

All these feelings had to stop! It had been over a year that they were there. Why couldn’t she just rid of them!

It was just so frustrating! She didn’t even know anything about her, she hadn’t even seen her whole face!

She took off her cloak and clothes before letting herself fall on her bed. She crawled under the covers and fell asleep after an hour of staring at the ceiling.

~*~

About a week later, The Shadow finds herself fighting against about ten men of a gang. That’s why she didn’t usually go after the guy at the head of a criminal organization, it wasn’t as easy as just killing him, you usually had to go through his men first, but when he started doing human trafficking that’s when she doesn’t care how many men she has to go through to get to him, even if it kills her.

Unfortunately, that was exactly what was happening, there was still these ten men to go through, but going through the ten before, had exhausted her, the injuries she had were pretty badly, she was bleeding out of her leg where one of them had managed to stab her, she was pretty sure she had broken at least one of her rib and she had a bullet in her shoulder.

She tried to continue fighting, but the loss of blood was starting to get to her, she sliced the air with her sword, not caring whether it hit someone or not, trying to keep them away from her.

Someone broke into the warehouse, all the men’s attention went to the door and at that moment she collapsed.

~*~

The first thing she noticed when she woke up, was that she was lying down on a couch somewhere she didn’t know. Panicked she started getting up only for pain to shoot up from her shoulder and ribs.

“Whoa! Don’t try to get up! I just stitched you up, don’t open them up!” A familiar voice said, the owner of the voice pushing her back down. The sleeve of that person was gold.

“Illusionist?” Ruby said, glad to find that her hood was still on. “Where am I?”

“You’re at one of my safe houses.” She walked away and came back seconds later with a glass of water and a couple of pills, she passed them to Ruby. “Here. Painkillers.”

“Thanks,” she looked at the pills skeptically, but realized that The Golden Illusionist didn’t kill anyone and anyways what was the point of trying to poison someone after patching them up. She took the pills and drank a bit of the water. She gave the glass back.

The illusionist helped her sit up, making sure that the stitches wouldn’t open up.

“Why are you helping me? I’m a villain, you’re a hero, we’re supposed to hate each other’s guts.”

“Well I couldn’t just leave you there and let you bleed out!” The girl dressed in gold replied almost offended.

“Yeah, but you could’ve locked me up or something, why here? In your safe house.”

“Because I don’t believe you’re the villain everyone says you are. I’ve been a hero for a while and they are some villains that are way worse than you, they don’t care who they kill, they just kill whoever they want. You however, you only kill the ones that are criminals, I don’t necessarily agree, but at least you’ve never killed an innocent person.

“Even though you seem to have gone a bit more on the dark side these last months, I believe I can help you in the right direction,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, okay then, if you know me _so well_ , what makes you think you can help me and I’m not completely on the ‘dark side’, as you say.”

“I’ve been fighting against you since I started my hero stuff, the others don’t know you that well, so they don’t know that you are good deep down. And I believe, even if no one else believes it, that all those people you killed, you’ve killed them because they were criminals. I’m sure you had a reason to kill that professor. I also see it in your eyes, if you were completely on the dark side, you would’ve killed the other heroes and maybe even me,” Ruby winced at the thought of killing her, “but you didn’t and I know you go easy on me when we fight, I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”

She knew it was ridiculous, but it felt good hearing this from her, she heard so many people saying she was bad and here someone, and not anyone, someone she secretly cared about, told her that she wasn’t.

Someone was telling her that she was good or at least capable of good and for the first time in a long time, the darkness that surrounded her became slightly lighter. It might have been slight but it was a beginning.

It was also at that moment that she fell for the girl in gold.

~*~

For the first time in a long time, she made one of her harmless pranks in the mall. It felt good seeing the chaos without anyone actually being harmed. The panic on their faces was actually pretty funny, because she knew none of them would get hurt, they were panicking for nothing.

As she had hoped, the golden girl came to try to calm the people and put an end to her prank.

Once she was done, she went to the roof to go join the hooded girl. She sat next to her, their legs dangling over the edge.

“How are your ribs?”

“Better, they’re practically healed.”

“Good,” she said, nodding absentmindedly.

The sun was setting, they were both staring at it in silence.

“Thanks again, for patching me up.” Ruby said shyly. “I owe you.”

She took a pen from one of her pockets, hesitantly took the hand of the golden girl, pulled her glove off and wrote a number on it.

“Is that your phone number?” The illusionist asked surprise.

“It’s my burner phone, if ever you get in trouble call me.” The other still looked at her in disbelief. “As I said, I owe you.”

With that she got up and walked away.

~*~

About two weeks later Ruby received a call.

“Hello?”

“ _Hey! It’s The Gold-_ ” Ruby could hear the fight in the background and she cut her off, already putting on her reaper outfit.

“Where are you?”

She went to the location she was given and immediately saw why the other called her, The Golden Illusionist was fighting hand-to-hand against a bunch of guys with advanced technology guns. She could also see that the room was surrounded by wave emitters that disrupted her illusions, her illusions’ deception being her only weapon.

The first thing she did, was turn off the wave emitters, she then hid in the shadows and threw knifes at the illusionist opponents. After a few got taken down, she joined the other girl in the fight.

Once all the guys were down, dead or knocked out, she rushed over to the girl in gold. Looked at her up and down, searching for any injuries.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Ruby asked, not even trying to keep the concern out of her voice. Before the other could answer, Ruby got hit by an electric shot.

She fell to the ground. Once she stopped twitching, she looked around her to see that she was surrounded by three of the minor heroes.

At that moment she realized she was betrayed. This was a trap. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted anyone, not even the girl in gold.

The wave of darkness that was slowly going away, suddenly engulfed her. Her body started moving, she barely controlled it anymore, all she knew was that she found herself a minute later with the three lifeless bodies of the minor heroes and her sword to The Golden Illusionist’s throat.

“Choose your last words wisely,” sneered the villain.

The heroine shakily lifted her head, “I love you.”

Those words were like the light a lighthouse in the distance on a stormy night. Ruby grabbed the light before she ran away.

Once she arrived to her apartment, she let herself slide down the door and she started sobbing.

What had she done?

~*~

She spent the next days, locked in her apartment, feeling miserable, still holding on tight to the bit of light she had.

As she spent the days with her thoughts, she realized her mistake, it wasn’t her that was betrayed, it was the girl in gold that was by the people who were supposedly on her side.

The girl she fell in love with would never want to see her again, she reached the ‘dark side’. She wasn’t good anymore and she had just proved it by killing those ‘heroes’.

What she didn’t realize during those days was that the guilt slowly chased the darkness away and the light she clung to slowly took its place.

~*~

About a week after the incident, she’s woken up by her phone, without looking who it was she answered.

“Hello?”

“ _Hi_ ” said a shy voice.

She looked at the caller ID and was surprised to see “The girl in gold”

“Are you okay? Is there a problem?” She said, quickly getting up.

“ _Um… No. I was just wondering if we could maybe talk. Like in person._ ”

“Sure?” She said, feeling stupid. _I’m going to fall into another trap,_ a voice in her mind said, but she ignored it.

There was a sigh of relief on the other side. “ _Can you come to my safe house tomorrow at two?_ ”

“I’ll see you there.” She said awkwardly before hanging up.

What was she getting herself into?

~*~

She arrived at the time they had set to the girl in gold’s house all dressed up in her reaper costume. She barely knocked twice that the door swung open.

“Oh thank God, I was scared you wouldn’t come.” Said the girl looking nervous. “Come in.”

She stepped aside and let The Shadow into her house. She guided her to the couch and told her to sit down.

They sat awkwardly in silent for about a minute. The girl in gold broke the silence first.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t know those heroes- if you can call them heroes any more- would be there and I’m sorry if I scared you away by saying ‘I love you’ but at the same time it’s true like I’ve been in love with you for a while and it’s totally okay if you don’t feel the same as you're so cool and I’m not that cool and you know you’re probably not even gay so I’m really sorry that I scared you off-” she was rambling and Ruby didn’t know what to do to stop her. She tried to interrupt her, but to no avail. She wasn’t even sure what the other was saying anymore. The girl said she loved her a couple time already it wouldn’t hurt if she just-

Ruby leaned in and kissed her. The other girl shut up and when she didn’t kiss back, Ruby freaked out.

“Sorry, you just wouldn’t stop talking and I didn’t know how to make you stop and you said you loved me a few time so-”

It was her turn to be quieted by a kiss. It took a second to get over the shock, but once she did she kissed back. She put her hand on the girl in gold’s cheek. It was a slow and sweet kiss. When they parted, they were both smiling.

The girl in gold put her hands up to her mask and before Ruby could say anything, she took it off. Even though her mask didn’t cover mush of her face, she was even more beautiful without it.

She put her hand out and said, “Hey, I’m Stephanie Stewart, but you can call me Steph.”

Ruby slowly took her hood off, revealing her short brown hair and hazel eye, she took Steph’s hand, shaking it and smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Steph. I’m Ruby Johnson.”


End file.
